III
Hilary says that I was very quiet over dinner that night. He remarked it, he says, because it was so unusual. Hilary has an illusion common to Englishmen, that if a man can utter three consecutive sentences without breaking them up with “eh,” “ah,” “hm,” “mm,” and any other noises that may occur to him as fit and proper, he must be held to be talking too much.
How on earth, I was wondering, could I cast the name of Mrs. Storm before my host with even a tolerable hope of his more than grunting at it? For, of course, one never discussed women with Hilary. I believe he had been a member of several clubs once upon a time, but in these degenerate days he had finally withdrawn into the impenetrable fortress of the Marlborough; Guy and he agreeing that, since it was once said of a King of Spain that he had died of etiquette, they envied rather than cared to overlook their young friends in the exercise of the long lives assured to them.
“He will, if you provoke him,” Iris had said, absently enough. And, indeed, never but once had I ever heard Hilary expand at the mention of a woman’s name, and that was when I had provoked him by defending her, the lady in question being one for whom he had a great regard but who had, as they say very aptly in the popular phrase, “gone completely off the rails.” As regards Iris, in that case, it should be child’s work.
Hilary says now that he was able, so soon as I mentioned her name, to account for my subdued air. Such, Hilary says, was the aftermath of Iris’s effect on men. But all he said at the time was, snappy like, that he hadn’t even known she was in London and would I have port or brandy or both, because I was detaining them at my side of the table? I said I was sorry and how amiable Mrs. Storm had been about him. “And fancy,” I said, “her being Gerald’s twin sister!”
“Why ‘fancy’?”
Hilary was annoyed. Now why was Hilary annoyed? Why do men get annoyed?
“She is beautiful,” I said, “she is good, she is—”
“It seems to me,” snapped Hilary, “that they make a perfectly harmonious pair of twins. Hm.” And he lit a cigar and reflected profoundly on the flame of the match. Perhaps I had better leave out his “hm’s.”
“There’s only one March,” he said, pushing a cup of coffee towards me as though he hated the sight of it, “who has ever been any good, and that’s the aunt, Eve Chalice, a dear old lady. Heavens above, the March blood! But they will be near their last gasp now, with young Gerald as the heir. …”
It just showed, you know, how much one ever knew about that young man. I had no idea he was heir to anything, let alone the bankrupt earldom. “Ever since last July,” said Hilary, “when his uncle, Barty’s elder brother by a year, and his cousin thought they would do some fifth-rate mountaineering in Switzerland without a guide, and tried by mistake to climb the Jungfrau.” Hilary, I remember thinking, seemed very bitter about that mountaineering. You know, that bitterness of a calm, normal, reasonable air, with a slight flavour of old-world banter? He seemed to want to give the impression that he rather gloated than otherwise over the decline and fall of the house of Portairley. Gerald, as the nineteenth earl, Hilary seemed to want to say, served the house of Portairley right. If Hilary could only have seen his own kind grey eyes!
But that something, apart from the mere existence of the Marches, had annoyed him, was obvious; and presently I realised that the something was the fact that Iris had not let him know she was in London, but that he had heard of it from me, from anyone, in fact, but herself. I ought instantly to have guessed that was the matter, Hilary being one of those detached men who have no use for the flibberty-gibberties of life.
Gerald, one thought, would make about as pretty an Earl of Portairley and Axe as even the Marches could boast. “But at least,” I suggested, “he will have a little more money than he has now?”
“About,” said Hilary, “minus five hundred a year. They can’t even bribe anyone to take Portairley, and so the old gentleman has to live in a couple of rooms and pay the taxes on the property from what his creditors allow him. That old curse working, one would think. …”
There isn’t really a great variety among these family curses. There appear to be no more than two schools of thought among the cursers, one which consigns the cursed to instant death, and the other to prolonged disgrace ending in damnation. The Portairley’s curse was of the second variety, and poor Gerald appeared to be in at the death for the damnation.
“Vaguely,” I said, “I gather that Gerald and his sister had some quarrel in the distant past. But I happened to see Gerald as I came on here, and he seemed ready for a reconciliation. In that case, as Mrs. Storm seems to be wealthy. …”
Certainly Hilary could surprise one. He exploded, in that quiet parliamentary way which is one of the loftiest dignities of a constitutional country: “And thank the Lord she is! Imagine the shoddy life of an Iris—with neither money nor morals!”
Evidently, then, Hilary had a great regard for the lady of the green hat. You must remember that until this evening not so much as her name had passed between us. … “He will, if you provoke him,” Iris had said. Well, hadn’t I!
Hector Storm V.C. had, it seemed, left her every penny. Storm, steel, Sheffield. “Fine boy, Storm,” said Hilary, pulling at a stiff grey thing which I forgot to
